Energy plant planned for North Fork

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Federal funding has been awarded to the Yosemite/Sequoia Resource Conservation and Development Council to begin pre-construction planning for what’s set to be the first small scale, clean-burning woody biomass gasification energy plant in California.

“This is exciting news for not only the community of North Fork, but for the entire Sierra Nevada region,” said Jim Branham, executive officer of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which provided the technical assistance to RC&D to write the grant application.

The renewable energy plant is set to be built at the historic North Fork Mill site, which stopped processing logs nearly two decades ago and is owned by the North Fork Community Redevelopment Council.

The $134,225 award to the Madera County program was only one of 20 grants totaling $3.9 million given to entities nationwide last month by the U.S. Forest Service through its woody biomass utilization program...